If you are a local screen printing company looking to increase your sales, you may need to follow the psychological principles of pricing to get the best results while changing very few of your actual prices. For example, people are more likely to buy your products if you have a banner advertising 80% off, even if they are the same prices you would be selling them for without the banner. We are lured in by a sale and perceived discount even if there isn’t a real one. Here are some of the strategies you can employ online and in store to increase sales:
Create Artificial Time Constraints
Ticketmaster is the perfect example of this. You find tickets and put them in your cart, then a timer pops up, counting down how much time you have to complete the purchase before someone else might snatch them out of your grasp. It makes you worried. Will you lose the seats you wanted? Will the show sell out before you can quickly type in your credit card details? You will rush to purchase because the timer is ticking away. Have you ever waited? Your selected tickets are typically still waiting for you, so using this technique leads to faster checkouts and more snap-decision purchases.
Another way to use this tactic is to have flash sales. Even if these sales happen once a month, people will rush to buy your items at 50% off because you’ve created a time constraint on the prices. There is a fine line: if you have these sales too often, your brand’s price perception can drop. This is why most companies follow seasonal sales such as Black Friday, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, their anniversary or birthday sale, and so on.
Advertise “Free” Items
Running a promotion where if your buyer spends an amount, they get free shipping, a free item, etc., means they are more likely to spend more. They may not want to put more in their cart without the promotion. When offered, it’s hard to resist the extra incentive.
Additionally, either through math illiteracy, called innumeracy, or conditioning, we want the free item. Because it takes more math comprehension to determine that 50% off two shirts is the same as a buy one get one (BOGO) free deal, most buyers will choose the BOGO option.
Generate Scarcity
Think back to lockdowns when people were hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Those items were scarce, so stores had signs with limits per customer on those items. Imagine seeing those signs on an item you were reaching to buy. It would make you think it’s scarce, so you may grab a few more, just in case.
Airlines will employ this tactic differently. When looking at flights, the website will say only five more tickets at this price. The entire plane may be empty, but they’ll have that notice flash up; You feel a sense of urgency to finish the purchase quickly so you don’t lose the price.
Use Phrasing and Fine Print
Grocery stores use this tactic by putting sale signs up stating “10 for 10.” You may automatically think you need to buy 10 items for the discount. However, the fine print says they’ve priced it at $1 per item. If you phrase your sale a certain way, people will buy more because of the perceived great deal, overlooking the fine print altogether.
Ultimately, we all want more for less, or the maximum per dollar. Buyers will be willing to buy a $50 pair of shoes because they are marked as 75% off even though there’s a perfectly comparable shoe full-price for $45. With the cheaper shoes, you’re not getting a perceived deal, and they may not be as good as the shoes that are supposed to be much more expensive.
Start Charm Pricing
Also called the left-digit effect, charm pricing is based on the fact that we read left to right and will automatically think something is closer to the first than the last digit in pricing. Something costing 3.99 will look closer to three than four at a glance. This works exceptionally well for items around the $100 mark. Make them $99 and see the increase in sales.
You can further inflate this effect by eliminating a few items on the price tag:
- Decimal Points: If you print the whole dollar amount in a larger, bolder font and reduce the size and boldness of the cents’ font next to it, you are conveying the price while instilling the association with the first digit.
- Dollar Signs: The dollar sign or even the word dollar makes the price appear longer and relates consumers to their wallets. By omitting this, you won’t remind them of parting with their money and minimize how high the price is.
If you are utilizing all these price tag psychology tactics and still need to generate more sales to keep your business viable, consider some other options, such as outsourcing to screen printing fulfillment services. Read about the indicators that it’s time to outsource here.
Robert is the founder of Thrive Screen Printing and enjoys helping businesses learn how to enhance their brand through screen printing.